Paul Tagliabue runs a league with much better player-management
relations than it had a decade ago.

NEW ORLEANS  Twenty years ago, NFL players were preparing
to strike, to shut down the league. The 56-day walkout wiped seven games from
the schedule and foreshadowed 10 more years of bitterness, walkouts and lawsuits.
All of which seems a little hard to believe now. Once a hard-liner and a firebrand,
NFL Players Association executive director Gene Upshaw moves comfortably among
league executives, talking and traveling with Commissioner Paul Tagliabue. As
the league's lawyer during the dark days of unrest, Tagliabue's loyalties lay
with management figures desperately opposed to granting player demands for free
agency.

Now peace reigns and both sides prosper.
Together, they are the game. A labor agreement signed in 1993 that gave the
players their long-sought freedom also handed the clubs a salary cap and struck
a balance that fed the coffers on each side and caused hostilities to cease.

"That agreement is the cornerstone, and the reason we have
had peace for so long," said Upshaw, whose group signed an extension through
the 2007 season.

The renegotiated deal improved pension benefits, put some
limits on offseason workouts and made salary-cap adjustments that should allow
veteran players a better chance of competing for jobs.

The union and the league agreed on joint marketing programs,
worked together on Internet services and continually amending and updating their
collective bargaining agreement.

Upshaw quietly steers player opinion to Tagliabue and doesn't
try to upstage him. When the commissioner announced the league's decision to
postpone the games of Sept. 15-16 after the terrorist attacks, he declared a
time of mourning. He drew applause for making the right decision.

The players, though, had voted the night before not to
play. Seventeen of the 28 represented on a conference call indicated their unwillingness
to take the field. When Upshaw passed that news to Tagliabue, the decision was
essentially made.